Opinion | Can China’s restraint inspire a more peaceful rivalry with the US?

When the curtain fell on the Paris Summer Olympics last weekend, people from all over the world took note that the United States and China tied for first place with 40 gold medals each, leading the rest of the competing countries by quite a margin.

Allison got the point, but the analogy can go only so far. While competition in the Paris Olympics did not go much beyond accusations and counter accusations over doping controversies, the stakes in any geopolitical contest are incomparably higher as it entails loss of property and human lives. The ongoing war in Ukraine has painfully reminded us of this every day for the past two and half years.

The Chinese understand this, especially owing to their tradition of learning from history, which is all but tantamount to a religious belief in their culture. More than 2,000 years ago, legendary military strategist Sun Tzu, warned about the grave consequences of starting a war. “Warfare is of vital importance to a state,” he said in his classic work, The Art of War, adding, “It is a matter of life and death, a road to either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject which by no account can be neglected.”

Beijing knows that Washington’s path to hegemony cannot be copied. For one thing, there is no Second- or- Third Reich equivalent in today’s world to distract and exhaust America as the contemporary version of the British Empire. Today’s Russia is far from a historical equivalent given its total factor weakness.